Isha sang to herself, alone in the darkest corner of the Emperor's ship, preferring solitude in her pain over the company of curious and vengeful mortals; and their cruel and calculating protector.
She did not know what this place was, but since the Custodes stationed around the ship gave her free passage, she let herself in, shutting the door behind her.
The truth of life warbled around her, telling tales of the simplest forms it had taken; the names of single and multicellular life forming from carbon containing solutions of acid and rock. Life that lasted mere milliseconds, but reflected the nature of all other life that came after it.
'Single celled yeast, provided with an excess of sugar, switches to anaerobic metabolism.' Isha reminded herself as her song's verses carried over the creature and all the other alien organisms like it that sprang up across the universe, convergently evolving to fit a similar niche.
'Thus, they produce toxic alcohol, unpleasant even to themselves, and something that they avoid when given only a little sugar.' Images of the small spherical creatures, floating in small bundles squirting out the substance flit in her mind, while the excess resources were symbolized as green lights that floated everywhere around them.
'All to kill all others unlike themselves; leaving nature's harvest to them and their kin.'
Life, even at its most basic level, was brutal and cruel. Creatures with no brain cells, no nerve cells secreted self-scarring toxins and wastes; all to kill everything else unrelated to them at a quicker rate than they killed themselves.
'And sentient creatures use that cruelty to make beer, bread, and all the other foods and drinks to feed themselves.' Her mind pulled back from the micro-scale to the macro. The eternal cycle of birth, survival, reproduction, and finally death; repeated endlessly at all levels.
'Humanity acts as all life does, and so does its protector.'
It was all she could do to stop her song from becoming a banshee shriek. Only the bare fact that this cruelty shown by the Emperor was nothing unique, allowed her to slowly cope with her anger; to begin to put out the flames of her burning rage.
"Would it be too much to ask for you to show some degree of decorum while you occupy my vessel?" The Emperor spoke as he stepped out of the shadows.
"Leave me be." Isha said wearily. "We have not reached the place to call my children, and I do no harm here."
"Your voice echoes through the immaterium. I hear it as clearly here as I do anywhere."
"So what? My song is inaudible to mortals at the moment. Only creatures like us can hear it." Isha replied irritably. "Is life's song so vexing to you that you must silence me in my moment of grief?" She snorted, anger building up again at the sight of the murderer of her children.
"I am considering it." The Emperor said slowly, and she could feel faint but very real emotions of irritation and anger radiate from him; an unusual moment of vulnerability. Familiar feelings she had felt before.
"I see…" A slow smile crossed Isha's lips. "So you are not just the mortal Protector of Mankind."
A dangerous look entered the Emperor's eye; a different tightness to his grim jaw, harsher features than the ones that usually formed the cold calculating visage that she was used to."I do not like what you suggest."
"Khaine found my voice displeasing as well." Isha's smile grew wider, her hurt numbing her senses; bitter vengeance spurring her on to have her own petty revenge against the creature who hurt her first. "How did he put it?" She said, putting a finger to her chin in a look of feigned thought. "It was like 'being told, time and time again, that the flames that form the funerary pyres are but a single pop of an undried branch upon which the bonfire of life burns.'"
"Careful…" The Emperor took a heavy step forwards.
"You aren't just a protector." Isha cooed back at him, minor victory in sight. "You are a god of de-"
An armored hand closed around her throat, cutting off her voice before slamming her into the floor with a loud bang.
"I am not a god." The Emperor growled, teeth bared in her face. "Do not test my patience. I have struck bargains with Chaos for the future of mankind, and I may do so again."
"How brave of the hero of humanity to threaten and strangle a mourning mother." Isha hissed back at him, worn patience already thin, barely hanging by a thread. "Do you treat all your women as you do me?"
The Emperor remained silent for a moment, before his silhouette shifted, becoming softer and slightly smaller in stature.
"Does my grip become any softer, now that I am of fairer flesh?" The Emperor spoke with a higher pitched voice, and squeezed even harder, preventing Isha from replying. "If anything, I am more merciful than your Pantheon ever was."
Isha glowered up at the Emperor, refusing to choke, but also unable to speak. Golden sparks flashed from the usually brown eyes as white sparks lept from from hers; neither one backing down from the other's insults.
Slowly, both their eyes gradually dimmed as the immeasurably long silence allowed their anger to bleed away. Finally, the Emperor's grip relaxed slightly, as a tired look crossed the feminine features that were its current form.
"I came to your Pantheon in ages past. Before I took this form. Before I became like this." The Emperor let go of her throat, and stepped back, turning away from her. "I still remember the greeting of fire and silver at the gates as I cried out for but a moment of your attention."
There had been many immaterial beings who saw the gleaming city of the Aeldari Pantheon in the Sea of Souls, and prostrated themselves before it. Isha's mind briefly recollected the faint cries and shouts of beings infinitely smaller than them from beyond the borders of their domain. None were allowed entry, for the disguised followers of the Ruinous Powers and Tzeentchian daemons were always scattered among the ranks of these desperate god-creatures. Eventually they were all driven back by Asuryan's flames and sentinels when the forces of Chaos came in earnest; to clear the battlefield of any unexpected interference.
"Is that why you share so many similarities with Asuryan; taking form with fire and chain?" Isha answered, looking up at him angrily but no longer vengeful.
The feminine Emperor snorted. "And you think of me as arrogant." Chuckling as it shook its head, the Emperor turned to look back down at her. "Flames are but a step in the path of progress all sentient beings make. For with the invention of fire, sharpened sticks can be hardened into spears, and flesh and marrow can be cooked for greater sustenance."
The two continued to stare at each other, like a tiger and lion who had just wrestled with the other, only finally managing to break apart after nipping the other's shoulder; circling, daring the other to challenge them again.
"The planet you wanted for your people approaches." The Emperor finally said, returning to his masculine form. "Come with me to the command deck. We have much to discuss."
Isha watched the Emperor walk towards the door, opening it with a wave of his hand. Custodes already lined the walls of the corridor, back to the center of the ship, spines stiff in regal salutes.
Slowly, she picked herself off the floor, and followed him.
'Calm yourself Isha.' She thought. 'If your song is as painful to him as it was to Khaine, then forgive him his tresspasses against you.'
During the War in Heaven, Morai Heg; her mother and Goddess of Fate, asked her consort Khaine to cut off her arm so she could drink her own divine blood. An insane selfish gamble for very little gain; for Morai Heg already saw the multiple fates of others, even though she could not see the fate of herself.
At first Khaine refused, simply because maiming one of their own for their own curiosity when a much larger enemy existed was the height of folly.
So Morai Heg sent Isha and her other daughters to Khaine; promising them a strand of fate for their preferred mortal champion in return.
They came to their father, first asking, then begging, then with song and dance; for endlessly nagging him was as boring as it was for them as it was annoying to him.
'If we were to battle the iron will of Khaine…' Isha recollected. 'The least we could do to alleviate our boredom in our endless task was to do it in a way that we could enjoy.'
So Isha and her sisters sung and danced their individual truths around Khaine, expecting their father to remain as stoic and immovable as before.
Instead, Khaine raged. He roared and swiped with his armored hands, disrupting their song and dance, sending them stumbling back; unhurt but surprised.
But, finding a chink in their parent's armor, like all cheeky children, they decided to poke and pry.
They would take turns singing, sending Khaine charging at one of them, dancing away until the very last moment before his hands could grab them. Then they would stop, and their sister would sing, and Khaine would hold his head, cover his ears, scream and then turn to chase the next performer. An innocent, cruel game of tag, played at the behest of their mother and expense of their father.
Finally, Khaine agreed to cut off Morai Heg's hand, and for his service, received the aspect of the Banshee; a mirror to the soul shaking cries he suffered at the hands of his daughters.
The thought of pestering the Emperor into doing her bidding, like she and her sisters did to Khaine, crossed her mind; but she shook off the trickster thought.
'That was in the Sea of Souls. Movement is very different there than it is here.' With only 6 directions of space, and one of time, it would be a very short game of tag if she tried that; not to mention it was not her voice alone that caused Khaine to rage. Her song was annoying, not unbearable.
Isha allowed a part of herself to wax nostalgic, sending pieces of unneeded consciousness into memory.
Memories of singing and dancing while falling through multiple rainbow colored portals, dimensions, and dreams of mortal kind as the flaming giant form of Khaine followed; like an orange meteor chasing a tiny silvery comet.
Pink, blue, and green clouds rushed by as she brushed against the psyche of billions of past and future souls while falling and flying further away from Khaine.
The rush of watching his gauntleted hands open in preparation to close around her entire body in a binding fist; a game of chicken between parent and child. Then, she would do one final twirl and close her mouth, while in a time of yesteryear, her sisters' voices would call to the present Khaine.
Then the opened hands reaching towards her would instead recoil to Khaine's ears, covering them in a vain effort to stop a sound that he could do nothing but hear.
Then the game would start all over again, while she quietly slipped to the side of another time and place, readying for her turn to pull their father's attention from her sister at the very last moment.
'Folly of youth.' Isha smiled slightly, both at her own foolishness, and the memory of her ancient home; the freedom before Asuryan's edict and the growth of Chaos.
It was no surprise that the creatures of the universe often dreamed of trickster fairies, and cruel fey creatures that ran endlessly out of sight. Time ran neither forward nor backwards in the immaterium.
Isha stretched her essence outside of the confines of the body she had made for herself when entering the materium; drawing a sideways look from the Emperor.
"I do no harm." She said innocently, and she wasn't; the best mortal equivalent of what she was doing being a stretching of the neck or arm to relieve tension or stress. Although, she was fully aware that it was an unnatural movement for one with Warp sight; like watching a third arm or second head pop out.
"If you have the time to provoke me." The Emperor huffed. "It would serve you better to think of what to say to convince your children."
"What do you care…" She snorted. "You planned to butcher them all until I came."
"I've made my warnings." The Emperor said grimly. "I may not be a god, but I've seen enough to know where all their fates lie, and the toll their followers extract from them."